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Thursday, March 23, 2017

This House Burns Blue

by Gabby Vachon

My
mother wears so much blue, it’s fucking ridiculous.

Her
whole house is decorated in blue, so much so that she has a room called “the
red room” because it lacks the hegemony of blue of its neighboring kitchen and
laundry room.

People—like
her sisters, her personal trainer, and the cashiers at the local grocery store—often
remark upon the blue, even poke fun at it. But their criticism never bothers
her.

She
just smiles her famous tight smile and lets out a light suburban-mom laugh.

I
don’t know for sure why she’s so attached to the color blue, but I have a few
theories:

1.
Blue may remind her of her childhood, as her parents were ardent Quebec
separatists. If you don’t know much about Quebec politics, here’s a very basic
overview of the Sovereignty movement, or at least my version of it, keeping in
mind I am a pure-bread French Canadian who grew up in Montreal: French Canadian
people made up most of Quebec, a large Canadian province; English people made
up most of the rest of Canada. The Quebec provincial government was pissed at
Canada’s federal government for a multitude of reasons (some rational, some
lunatic) and decided to make the Quebec people vote twice, in 1980 and 1995,
about separating the province of Quebec from Canada, making Quebec its own
country. The vote failed both times, but the periods between 1970 and 1995 were
wrought with aggressive discourse, xenophobia, and even terrorism.

My
mom was born into a house with a big blue Fleur de Lys flag (the official
Quebec flag) planted on its lawn. She had been cradled in this flag; it was her
first toy, her first friend, her first truth. My grandparents made phone calls
for the Separation party, hosted events, and were even investigated in relation
to terrorist acts on federal representatives. The big blue flag, separated into
four corners, represented a people she could call her own, through childhood
all the way through young adulthood. She was proud Separatist.

Then
she moved to Toronto to study. She met my dad, an anti-Separatist to the core
of his being. She learned English. She got a good job. She read more than what
was available in her childhood home and French Catholic convent high school. And
slowly but surely, she changed her mind.

This
house that was once unified by Separatism had fragmented. She fought brutal
political wars with her parents and siblings, with whom she remained, despite
the political divide, very close. These fights hinged on identity, on the very
idea of belonging, on the very notion that the family had come from the same blue
roots and beliefs, yet couldn’t agree to the same nation state.

The
Canadian political climate calmed after 1995, the year I was born, and my
parents moved back to Quebec. They settled in a nice English neighborhood. They
raised a nice bilingual family. They held nice Christmases with my mother’s
family, tiptoeing around the glass shards of a once unified familial political
belief.

I
know she would deny it if confronted, but there is still a fragmentation inside
my mother’s heart. There were nights of endless fights that don’t escape
nightmares even for fifty-year-old women with blue yoga mats and blue Mercedes
SUVs.

A
river runs through my mother’s heart when politicians mention athird
referendum, and that river, though thin and filled with old rotten sticks and
stones, runs blue.

2.
Blue may remind her of my teenage years. When I was sixteen-years-old, I was admitted
to a children’s psychiatric hospital. I was bulimic, depressed, a nervous wreck,
and saw myself at the edge of something. I wasn’t sure what that something was,
but it felt violent. It’s as much as you’d expect from any sixteen- year-old,
really, but I was empty, and lonely, and suicidal, so the hospital, after I’d
called an emergency hotline and met with their team a few times, decided I
should be admitted for a week’s worth of treatment. They called my mother into
a small blue room filled with many chairs. She sat in the one furthest from me,
closest to the doctor. The psychiatrist then explained how my mother, because I
was a minor, would have to go downstairs, sign me over to the hospital’s
custody, and pack a few of my things from home, like homework, pajamas, and
toothbrush.

My
mother paused for a short time, though it seemed like forever, until she said:
“What if I don’t sign her over? What happens then?” I couldn’t believe her
reaction at first, but with thought, I could. My mother came from a generation that
found disgrace in therapy, shame in weakness, and secrecy in suicide. There was
no “sixteen-year-old girl who lives in a nice house with a nice family who goes
to a nice school with her nice friends and gets nice grades” who was also suicidal.
Whatever the problem, it wasn’t something a little bit of pulling oneself up by
the bootstraps couldn’t fix. She believed that these doctors, with their sharp
teeth and parent-shaming, would seek to destroy her blue-blood beliefs.

I
saw my mother not as angry, but as scared. Scared of the small blue room that
separated us, mother and daughter, blood and flesh, alive and, well, less
alive. There were too many chairs. I could see it her in her eyes, that she
thought there were too many chairs. There were too many chairs for too many
therapists and counselors and psychiatrists with their Pfizer checks and
pernicious hands. She didn’t want to believe this team of strangers could do a
better job repairing me than she could, the one who had birthed me in a room
not unlike this one.

The
doctor answered her, looking at me directly: “Well, we are keeping her, whether
you sign her off or not. We will take custody, but it is up to you how
peacefully it is done.” And that was that. I stayed a week. My mother came
during visiting hours and brought me awkward hugs and bowls of fruit.

That
wasn’t my last time in a mental hospital, not by a long shot, and my mom has
gotten better at handling the devastation each time. But I know in retrospect
that it was in that moment when my mother understood she couldn’t contain my
sanity in a clean Tupperware container. There was always going to be too much
blue inside my heart for her to warm with her burnt banana bread or long
heat-curled eyelashes. I was born a red-blooded girl, but numbed to a pale blue
shade as I grew older; and though my mother wears her blue proudly, she also
knows the color to be bigger than what any mother can fix.

3.
Blue may remind her of the eyes of those she loves.

We
are truly the whitest family on the block. We have light blond hair and alabaster
skin, and, yes, blue eyes (except my dad, but we really have a hard time
believing he’s actually physically related to us).

All
my cousins have eyes like sapphire engagement rings, so bright and faceted you
could neglect the possibility of divorce with one hefty check at Kay jewelers.

My
grandparents have eyes like the Caribbean Sea, clear and distinct and free of
pollution.

I
have eyes like an angry lake, dark and moody.

And
my mother, my mother has eyes so vibrant blue you can see the embrace of her safety.

You
can’t slip on the blue carpeting in my house.

You
can’t spill juice on the blue tablecloth.

You
can’t hurt your back sleeping on the expensive blue mattress in the guest room.

You
can try to escape it, certainly, but my mother possesses blue so potent you can
see yourself in its reflection. You see yourself, and your family, and the
cracks in your skins, and your smile lines, and your stress wrinkles, and your
veins.

Those
blue veins that unite us all: separatist, mentally ill.

Those
bulging lines in our arms that trace our heritage from France to this home in
the suburbs where my mother paints the walls in our honor.

For
our sake, she wears her blue parka when it’s cold and her blue Speedo one-
piece when it’s hot.

For
our sake, she is monochromatic.

And
maybe also for her sake.

After
all, a dark blue Mercedes SUV is so much easier to clean.

Gabby Vachon is
a writer and artist from Montreal, Canada. She has been published or has work
forthcoming in Tiny Tim, Ink in Thirds, and The Corvus Review, among other
publications. She is an editor for Soliloquies
Anthology. Her favorite food is the skin around her cuticles, and she is
happily and forever married to her true love Justin. Follow her on twitter
@gabbyvwrites.